Children and Youth Classes
Children and Youth Classes are every Sunday from 10:00am to 11:15am.RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
About Faith Formation and Religious Education (FFRE)
Our education program’s purpose is to help create a safe, accepting, and educational space by exploring all ways of learning.
What can you expect from our religious education program?
- We provide class sessions during Sunday Services, where we start in service every Sunday and then walk to our classrooms after our Wisdom Story in the service. Class starts from 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. every week.
- We provide extracurricular programming and activities such as OWL, CoA, social action projects, community activities and events.
- We provide spaces not only for our children and youth, but for their friends and families to have opportunities of spiritual growth, connections, and educational explorations.
What We Teach
All of our classes are part of a Foundational Education program. We have built this program from the ground-up ourselves, keeping in mind our students and families needs. Our program helps our students not only understand the fundamentals of Unitarian Universalism but also to guide them in the understanding of what being a UU is for them personally. We have worked hard on a age-appropriate curriculum that will cover:
Our Principles
The Eight Principles and how they apply to them in their constantly shifting and growing world. While simultaneously exploring other places of faith and their value systems.
Symbolism History
The origin of our chalice symbol, other world and religious symbols, and how they have impacted our world or continue to do so.
The 6 Sources
Explaining the sources that we use in our continual exploration of Unitarian Universalism and helping them to use these resources to create their own credo statements.
UU History/People/Events
Giving our students prime examples of our history, and of those people and events that have shaped and formatted our world, as we experience it today. Supplying them with conversational pieces to be able to speak out into the world about where they come from as others do with their individual religious beliefs.
World Religions
Allowing our students to expand their knowledge in what the outside world can provide, and teach through new experiences. We offer our children first hand knowledge with guest speakers, field trips and self-exploration of different spiritual practices taught by other world religions.
This foundational education was created to provide a learning experience that not only prepares them for the world, but also helps them to find themselves in their own spirituality and faith, wherever it may lead.
*If you have any questions please feel free to contact our Director of Religious Education, Naomi Blackwood.
LEARN MORE:
Message From Our DRE
FFRE is our Faith Formation Religious Education Program at First Universalist. Our program’s purpose is to help create a safe, accepting, and educational space for you and your family to explore your own faith-based traditions while we help to instill morals, values, and fundamental education around Unitarian Universalism. We encourage our students of all ages to engage in multiple ways of learning to help reach children and adults of different backgrounds, cultures, family dynamics, and educational styles. We do not believe that there is one way of being, so why should there be one way of learning? Our teachings encourage self-exploration and self-expression while giving you and your family a foundational structure to help grow your own beliefs in mind and spirit.
Your family has found their way to our congregation, most likely in search of connections that have not yet been fulfilled. Here at First Universalist, we strive to provide you with peers that can encourage, support, and engage with your family. We endeavor to support opportunities for families of all dynamics to build community together by joining a small group, connecting at congregational social events, and bringing you together for meals, programs, and support systems.
From our programming, your child will begin on a journey of exploration not only for their “spiritual self,” but a path leading them to who they are as individuals and as people within our community. No matter what age they are joining our community, they will engage with peers and elders to help them explore who they are as independent people.
While traveling together on this path, your children and youth will explore their own morals, values, and religious beliefs. This happens as early as our nursery program where we establish consistency and learning through play, music, art, and community building. We encourage this by asking your child every week about their feelings, and giving them choices on how they can act on those emotions. As your child grows, so does our curriculum. Through their educational journey your children in our second through fifth grades start to explore their spiritual selves. We see them grow in their own opinions of the world, we watch as they start to form ideas about what they believe in, we support and encourage their conversations about their faith, their religious self, and help to explore all types of questions pertaining to what they believe. All of our classes from kindergarten to twelfth grade are learning the same age-appropriate foundational education. The class lessons will appear differently, encouraging all types of learning through music, stories, art projects, videos, social justice projects, deep discussion, and even games. We have quiet areas in our classrooms where children can step away when overstimulated during activities, where they are encouraged to spend time in a safe space resting, evaluating, or contemplating life’s big questions.
We understand that sometimes it may take more than one conversation or class to truly comprehend the information we hope to teach. So we take our time in our classrooms, and run extended programs to get deeper as they grow and develop their own opinions. Other optional opportunities of learning such as “Our Whole Lives” (OWL), a sexual education program from the grades of K-6th and middle school (7th-8th), where they explore not only the basics of their own anatomy but also how they connect with themselves, their sexual identity, mental and emotional well being, and other relationships. Or our Coming of Age (CoA) (8th-9th) program, where they explore and establish their own credo statements to help them define their spiritual journey, and encourage them to develop their own spiritual practices during a time where self care is essential to their own mental and emotional health.
No matter what stage of life your family is in, at First Universalist we want to provide a community where you can explore the questions that matter most to you and give you the support you have been searching for. We are excited to welcome your family to our community, where we grow, explore, and learn together.
Sincerely,
Naomi Blackwood
Director of Religious Education (DRE)